]]>Over the past years, but particularly over the past couple of months, the level of TWAM has been escalating. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s my terminology for Twitter Spam (Mind you, I’ve applied for trademark rights for TWAM

This week, I’ve been personally subjected to it at least half a dozen times a day.

This new form of TWAM not done by professional TWAMMER’s. Those are the people inundating you with messages promising 100K follower, or other useless stuff. These are sales, marketing and others who are using social media terribly–discrediting themselves and the brand they are representing.

What the TWAMMER has done is identified some pretty heavy duty influencers like Mike, Anthony, Jill, and well the President (I added that for fun). They’ve added a link–sometimes to great content, usually something pretty mediocre.

In doing this, it appears in my feed, so confused and curious, I click on the link, wondering why @TWAMMER did this. Even worse, the TWAMMER has hijacked my followers and those of everyone else in they’ve included in the tweet. The tweet ends up in their streams as well.

Naturally, they wonder, “What is this? It seems somehow to be associated with Mike, Anthony, Jill, the President, and Dave. Perhaps I should look at it……”

So the TWAMMER is really seeking to hijack the followers of influential people on Twitter (I am far from that) leading them to their content.

Instead of building a reputation for quality content and engagement in Twitter, they choose a really shabby way to promote whatever it is they want, by hijacking the reputations of others.

Today, I got into a Twitter discussion with a TWAMMER. His profile indicated he was probably naïve and inexperienced, not malicious. I called him on his TWAMMING. His reply was, “If you had read the content, you would have seen it wasn’t SPAM, but great content.”

In responding to him, I explained how he totally missed the point. His method was deceptive and lazy. The content, was actually very good. But because his approach at hijacking my followers was deceptive, it left me with a negative impression of him and the brand he was representing.

Good content, delivered in a deceptive, manipulative, or unwanted manner is SPAM. In the end it creates more negative impressions than positive impressions.

Engaging people through social channels is just like engaging people through any other channel. There has to be a level of trust. Building that trusted relationship, building followers welcoming your content, wanting to be engaged with you, takes effort. There are no shortcuts.

There are all sorts of variants of TWAM. But pretty quickly, the community figures it out. It’s easy to see what someone is doing, it’s easy to detect the manipulation, so it becomes very easy to ignore.

If you are new to Twitter or other social engagement channels, take the time to build a following based on great content and engagement. Don’t take shortcuts, they’re very transparent–ultimately doing you and your brand more harm than good.

Postscript: In checking this article, I discovered there is someone who is @TWAMMER. That person has been on Twitter for close to 2400 days, has 1 tweet, 2 followers and is following 1. If that person sees this, forgive me for hijacking your Twitter name. I mean you no disrespect (I think)

]]>I feel obligated to put a disclaimor on my behavior at the beginning of this post. I sincerely try to be a good prospect when being prospected. It’s very difficult to prospect, I know, I’ve made thousands of prospecting calls over my career. As a sales professional, I have empathy for other sales people prospecting. Generally, I’ll answer a phone call, if I’m in and available. Generally, I will listen to someone and give them a chance.

So I do everything I can to be a good, well behaved prospect.

But in spite of that, it’s hard not to be tough on sales people when they do things that are incredibly stupid.

The phone rings, I pick up in my normal fashion, “Hi, this is Dave Brock, how can I help you?”

A cheery voice on the other end says, “Oh, you’re just the person I wanted to speak to, how are you today?”

Me, warily, “Fine, how can I help you?”

The cheery voice, “I’m So and So of this Company. I wanted to follow up on our conversation a few months ago about your accounting services.”

Me, “I don’t recall ever speaking to you before…….When was the conversation?”

You can already see where this is going. But it’s the truth, I didn’t recall, but I keep a record of incoming/outgoing calls (Isn’t CRM wonderful?)

The slightly less cheery voice, “It was a few months ago, ….. actually these are notes from a colleague…..”

Me, “What was the name of your colleague? I’m sure I have that in my records, I’d like to refresh my memory on the call.”

OK, I know I’m starting to be a jerk. You and I both know there was never a previous call.

It’s one of those manipulative prospecting tricks sales people try, hoping people are stupid enough not to realize there has never been a conversation. It rarely works, but, a definitely uncheery voice continued, “Well, I’m really sorry, I don’t seem to have that information in my notes……”

At this point she just wanted to get out of the call, but I kept going (OK, now I’m being a little sadistic, but I needed a little comic relief in the day.)

“Well, since it appears we haven’t spoken, what was it we would have talked about a few months ago if we had spoken?”

The less cheery voice, “Well, I’d love to talk to you about how we can take all of your accounting off your hands and do a great job in managing your company’s books……”

Me, “Well, if someone from your office had called me before, they would have known to put me on your do not call list. I would have said the same thing then as I’m saying now. I’m absolutely delighted with my current accounting firm. They’ve been supporting our company for about 20 years and do a fantastic job!”

Me, rubbing it in, “I’m really surprised that’s not in your notes. It’s a shame for you to waste your time, not to mention mine, calling when you know I’m not a prospect.”

Me, going for the kill shot, “How else can I help you?”

I think I heard a meek, “Thanks, g’bye,” but she was hanging the phone up pretty quickly.

OK, I was a jerk, I admit it. Perhaps I needed to let off a little steam. But if she hadn’t started the call with a lie, if she had been straightforward, the call may have gone a completely different direction.

If she had started saying something like this at the outset, “Dave, we’ve never spoken before, but I know that people like you are very busy running business. The last thing you want to worry about is the boring task of accounting……” While I would have still told her how pleased I am with my accountants, it would have been a much more pleasant call. Also, I may have given her the name of a friend who was whining about his accountants this past weekend.

Oh well! Back to work. Note to self, look at the caller ID next call…….

Too often, I see sales managers who are actually doing the sales people’s jobs, not their jobs as sales manager.

Some of it is the result of misguided sales managers playing Super Salesperson. You know those types of managers. The one’s that feel no one can touch their abilities as sales person, so they sweep in to close deals, rescue deals that don’t need to be rescuing, or shoving the sales people to the side and taking over deals. It’s not only demoralizing and disempowering to the sales people; it’s wrong for the people and the business because every minute a sales manager plays Super Salesperson is a minute spent not doing their jobs.

The sales person’s responsibility is to manage their territories, maximizing their share of business and growth in the territory, assuring they hit their goals. As such, they have to prospect, qualify, and manage deals through the sales process. They have to make sure they are working a sufficient number of deals to have a healthy pipeline. They are responsible for putting in place the right deal, prospecting, pipeline management, and deal strategies. They have the responsibility of engaging the resources necessary to achieve their goals in the territory.

Those things are the sales person’s job, not the sales manager’s job. So if the sales manager is doing those things—it means at least two people aren’t doing their jobs.

By contrast, the sales manager’s job is quite different. At it’s core, it’s to maximize the performance of each person on the team and of the team as a whole. The things managers are responsible for, as a result, are quite different than what the sales person does.

The core elements of the sales manager’s job are about Leadership, Strategy, Business Management, People, Coaching.* These are quite different than the sales person’s job. The leadership/strategy pieces focus on culture, values, go to customer strategies, overall company positioning, deployment strategies and assuring the sales team are equipped and able to execute the company strategies with target customers. The strategy/business management piece focuses on the right resources, processes, systems, tools, training, metrics, incentives, programs, and support are in place for the sales people to execute the company strategies. The people element is focused on clearly defining roles, responsibilities, competencies, behaviors, attitudes critical for success in each sales role (field, inside, pre-sales, support, sales enablement, etc.), recruiting, hiring, onboarding and managing performance. The coaching element of the manager’s job is working with each person, maximizing their ability to perform in the job and developing them to take on bigger responsibilities in the future.

For example, the sales manager cannot and should not develop and execute deal strategies. However, the sales manager’s job is to make sure the sales person understands the elements of a winning deal strategy and that they are trained in how to develop and execute these strategies. The sales manager has the responsibility for inspecting deal strategies, coaching the sales person in how to strengthen their strategy and better execute it.

The jobs and responsibilities of sales people and sales managers (and everyone else in the organization) are distinct and different.

Each person has to perform at the highest level in their own jobs—they don’t have the time or responsibility to do someone else’s job.

If manager’s try to step in and do the job their sales people are accountable for, then they aren’t doing their job as manager and they aren’t letting their people do their jobs.

If the organization is to perform, each person must be accountable for and performing at the highest levels in their respective jobs–not doing what they want to do or someone else’s job.

If, as a manager, your passion, where you want to spend your time, where you have the most fun is doing deals–then by all means do it–but as a sales person!

* Our free Sales Management Operating Frameworkoutlines this at a much deeper level. Email me at dabrock@excellenc.com for a free copy. Please provide your full name, company, company email address.

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]]>My article, How B2B Customers Make Decisions, sparked a lot of discussions in LinkedIn, Twitter, comments and emails. John N. (a good friend and client) raised an interesting question, “How do we get those lower level questions about how to make our customers’ work lives better?”

It’s a great question!

Truly understanding what makes each buyer tick, what their hot buttons are, their dreams and passions, what keeps them awake at night (I still think that’s a powerful concept), and so forth is really at the core of every sale. Customers tend to wrap business rationale around emotional/personal decisions.

Part of the challenge in discovering this is how we and the customers engage each other. Once we find a customer who’s willing to talk, who has a business problem they want to address, who wants to learn more about how they might better address opportunities, both we and the customer become hyper focused.

The focus is on those issues, or the deal. If we are selling consultatively, we go through a discovery process, we try to learn, to diagnose, then ultimately present our solution in a value based context. If we are really good, we are creating value in every interaction with the customer.

Customers, naturally, engage at that level–it’s the way we’ve trained them. It’s the way we challenge them, it’s the questions we ask that drive the responses and engagement.

Consequently, we both become focused on the problem or the deal.

Making our customers’ work lives better doesn’t start with the deal. It starts with the people–independent of the deal, problems, or issues we are focused on.

To make our customers’ work lives better, we have to understand who they are, what their dreams, goals, aspirations are (It’s not to cut inventories 10%, or reduce DSO 20%, or improve win rates by 15%, or to reduce costs by 23%). We have to understand what drives them, what they get excited about, what frustrates them, how they feel about their work, their company, and their accomplishments. We have to understand how they are measured, how their individual performance is evaluated. There’s what makes them feel good, how they want to grow and contribute.

To make our customers’ work lives better we have to understand them, as individuals.

None of this has anything to do with the “deal” or our business discussions with the customer. Because of this, both we and the customer tend never to take the time to have those conversations.

As a result, we never learn how we can make their work lives better. We never learn how to translate the discussions about the “deal” to the impact on making their lives better.

Our discussions leave us with a partial understanding–usually the concrete business issues like inventories are too high, DSO is killing us–but we never get to the root of dissatisfaction, fear, future promise.

By not understanding our customers’ as individuals, we are missing a huge amount of discovery that impacts our ability to do the deal.

Our conversations can’t be just focused on the deal. We have to learn about our customers–it doesn’t take a lot of time. Often, it’s simply keen observation, maybe a few conversations about who they are. If they are distracted, frustrated in meetings, understanding what that is can help us learn who they are.

People buy from people. If we are to help them buy, we have to understand who they are as people, not just the business problem they want to solve.

]]>Before I go any further, I know there are some detractors out there who will claim, “Smart Marketers,” is an oxymoron–something like military intelligence or sales professional (I tossed that in out of a sense of fair play.).

But, for the most part, I meet a lot of very smart, well intended marketing people who, somehow do terribly stupid things. As a result, they invest in huge marketing programs, that not only fail to achieve the desired results, but have a negative impact on the perception of the brand or company.

Right now, I’m looking at a series of emails, some landed in my Inbox, some received by others in the company, and some that have landed in our company Spam filter. They are all the same mail, directed to different people.

They are from a Fortune 100 technology company, actually a client of ours. I know the CMO and many of the marketing people. They are thoughtful, smart people, focused on strong customer engagement and building the brand. They have many marketing programs (both traditional and social) that are brilliantly executed.

But then you get one (actually a lot) of emails. This email had at least 3 tragic flaws:

1. Perhaps the most egregious: They bought a bad quality list. My apologies to the list vendors, but I’ve never seen a procured list worth 10% of it’s purchase price. This email(s) list, clearly was purchased from one of those companies that scrapes the web for names, decodes a company’s email format, and constructs lists that are largely fictional. Then they sell them to largely naïve, careless, or unsuspecting marketers.

It’s gotten somewhat comical. At our websites, we have “team,” pages with various members of our team. Each of us gets the same email. There’s also an “In Memoriam” page for Dr. George Lehner–a former partner and cherished mentor. George passed away years ago. When George passed away, I had all emails addressed to him forwarded to me. Within a few months, that issue was sorted out, but somehow, I’ve never stopped having emails addressed to him forwarded to me.

George still gets lots of email from enthusiastic marketers. He got this one, as well, Hmmmmm…….

We, also, have a lot of customers quotes and references at our websites. List vendors have the ugly practice of harvesting their names, appending the @excellenc.com to them and put them on a list. As a result, we get emails addressed to customer names, but at our company.

And then there are the dozens of fictitious names or variants of our people’s names that are also included in those lists.

Unsuspecting or naïve marketers spend ton’s of money buying lists that are pure crap. The problem is they usually don’t know they are crap, they probably don’t bounce, they may go into a “community mailbox” or into a Spam filter. But they end up paying for those names.

Moral of this story, “Buyer beware,” too many list providers intentionally or sloppily seem to provide more crap than real lists. (Forget the whole concept of opt-in.)

2. This second error is purely within the control of the marketing organization, but related to the previous point. They seemed to have an email strategy focused on “papering” an organization. I suppose the thought is, “Send enough emails to enough people in a company and someone will respond.” This then leads to a strategy of papering the world. Smart marketing is smart targeting. It’s not about contacting everyone in the organization in the hopes that someone responds. But it’s about targeted, relevant communications to specific personas.

Instead, these marketers, in their rush to communicate and engage, send the very same dull email to everyone, regardless of the relevance to the recipient. Let’s look at the case of this specific email from my client, the Fortune 100 technology company. We received over 50 of the same emails, one each–to the members of our team. My dear friend and deceased, George, got his email, and there were another 20 addressed to clients who are quoted or referenced in one of our sites.

Why would each of us have exactly the same interest. We have some officers in the company, some consulting/delivery partners, a marketing person, a small technology group. Each has different interests, so well targeted emails would address the likely interests of the officers, consultants, marketing, and technology people.

3. The third error was the message itself. You already know it wasn’t targeted, but it wasn’t about us–any of us. Instead, these were, “Buy my product emails.” The absence of customer focus, the inability to speak to issues important and relevant to me (and the others in or “theoretically in,” our company was the third major error. Instead of thinking what we were interested in, they focused on their interests—telling me about their wonderful products.

This email campaign was tragically conceived and poorly executed. I can only guess this was inflicted on 10’s of thousands of real and imagined people. I hope most of them went into a Spam filter of some sort-so the targets were oblivious to this terrible program and it would just be money and time wasted by the marketer. For those that received it, the impression is more negative–impacting the perception of the brand and the company, making the target more difficult to engage in future campaigns.

4. There’s a fourth error, pure sloppiness. Actually, it was best demonstrated in an email–actually several (the list issue) from a senior executive at a well funded, fast growing start-up. The person, sent a personalized letter, in the first paragraph stating, “Dave (or current resident), carefully researched your background and experience in LinkedIn, as well as your company website…….” He went on to describe, the issues executives in our industry faced and how his company helped address those issues. All in all, a well constructed letter.

I know you are waiting for the “But….”

Well his error, which totally discredited him and his “careful research,” was the industry and the problems he addressed had nothing to do with consulting or our business. He was addressing important and relevant issues to a very distant professional services industry, but completely foreign to us. I’m so pleased he did his homework and careful research. It’s clearly had a positive impact on my perception of him, his professionalism, and his company. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek.)

The Bottom Line

I wish these types of communications and marketing programs were rarities or the exceptions. I wish they were restricted to “schlocky” firms. (excuse my NYC’ese.).

But they are done by smart people working for great companies.

Unfortunately, my mail box is filled, daily, with communications from too many people distracted with volume over quality/relevance.

I know, in the case of this company, they know better. I know they would never want to be perceived in the manner in which this program came across.

But too often, whether it’s the pressure of time, needing to meet the numbers, lapses in clear thinking; we fail in execution.

Smart marketing, and smart people are better than this. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards of performance. We need not be seduced by taking shortcuts, instead viciously focusing on quality engagement, thoughtfulness and relevance. It doesn’t take huge volume, but those efforts always stand out, always have an impact.

Lest some of the sales professionals reading this get a little smug, saying “Go get them Dave,” we suffer from the same lapses. As a polite reminder, you may want to look to reread, Knowing Verus Doing, and the posts referenced at the bottom of the page.

Anthony’s probably right, but it brings up what I think is probably one of the most critical issues we face in coaching: Is The Person Coachable?

I’m pretty hard nosed about this topic. There are people who simply aren’t coachable. They won’t listen, they aren’t open to different ideas, they don’t appreciate or think about feedback, they won’t engage in discussions about what they are doing and how they might improve.

The problem with the uncoachable person is they have chosen not to learn, grow, improve. The uncoachable person tends to isolate himself from any kind of feedback, guided by their own opinions and views of the world.

Some managers make a mistake, thinking low performers who aren’t responding or improving are uncoachable. That may not be the case, there may be other issues (skills, aptitude, how they are being coached, etc.) that impact their performance.

I’ve seen top performers who aren’t coachable.

Again, managers make mistakes with these people, thinking they don’t need coaching, and just let them alone. But watch the uncoachable top performer. They won’t sustain that top performance very long.

Repeating myself, the uncoachable have made a decision to stop learning, growing, improving. As a result, they get left behind–even the top performer. As customers change, as our company/organizations change, as competition changes, we need to constantly be seeking to learn, change, improve, adapt. Coaching is a critical part of that process.

Ultimately, with the uncoachable, we are faced with a decision: It’s not “if,” but “when” we need to move them out of the business. Since the uncoachable are ultimately left behind, they become low performers. Since they refuse to be coached, there is no way their performance will improve. They can become a drain on management time and on the organization’s effectiveness.

The high performing uncoachable person, can be even more difficult. If he is an opinion leader in the organization, it makes it more difficult for the organization, as a whole, to grow, change, and improve. Others look at them, thinking, “They’re successful, they aren’t changing, why should I?” By the time their performance slips and people recognize it, there is an overall organizational performance issue.

Being uncoachable isn’t limited to individual contributors, managers and leaders at all levels can be uncoachable. This is devastating to the organization–both it’s performance and morale.

So the decision with the uncoachable is not if, but when you exit them from the organization.

But we have to be cautious. We have to make sure the person is uncoachable–not just difficult to coach, or struggling with performance.

As managers, we may have difficulties with certain types of people, and mistakenly think they are uncoachable, but they may respond very well to coaching from another person. If we haven’t established a trusted relationship with the person we are coaching, and if we don’t trust them, we may mistakenly think they are uncoachable.

How then, do we recognize the uncoachable?

They’re bad listeners–with everyone. They aren’t active, engaged listeners with customers, they don’t listen to peers in the organization, they don’t listen and engage with managers.

They aren’t open to feedback. They tend to get defensive (all of us get somewhat defensive), they resist. They may start making excuses or simply ignore the feedback, continuing to do the same things they’ve already done.

They present an image of “knowing it all.” They may be very smart, but they resist learning, they resist trying new things.

They may tend to isolate themselves in the organization. As the organization changes and they don’t, they may separate themselves. “Lone wolf” sales people may be the uncoachable, at least in today’s world.

They are probably relatively self-centered. Since they listen only to their own counsel, they tend not to be open to the views and ideas of others. They tend not to be collaborative. They may, in fact, tend to be very directive. They know the answers and expect others to follow their direction.

They are very resistant to change and tend to change grudgingly, often slipping back into old habits.

They may “mask” their uncoachability with passive aggressiveness. They may seem to agree with things, but then doing what they wanted to do in the first place.

Everyone may display some of these characteristics, some of the time. For the uncoachable, this their behavior all of the time.

The uncoachable, particularly the high performing uncoachable, is one of the biggest challenges to personal and organizational effectiveness. As leaders, we can’t ignore them, we have to take action.

One final note, as you look at the uncoachable, turn the mirror on yourself. Make sure you are coachable–or you may be the problem. (But of course, if you really were, you would probably not be reading this.)

]]>Participating in a webinar the other day, for a moment I was stumped by a question, “Does everyone need coaching?”

I guess, more than being stumped, I was stunned with the question. But on reflection, it’s an important question, or at least one that many are confused about.

To answer this, we have to look at the fundamental purpose of coaching.

There’s a lot we can write about this, but briefly, the purpose of coaching is to help people continually learn, improve, and grow. We want them to perform at the highest levels in their current roles and to help prepare them to move into larger roles where they can contribute even more.

Nothing in our contemporary business worlds stand still. Just to maintain, we have to continue to learn and grow. To get ahead, to outperform competition, to outperform our peers, we need to do even more.

What is top performance today, is mediocre tomorrow.

Consequently, I believe everyone, from the lowest performers to top performers need coaching.

Coaching isn’t limited to individual contributors. Everyone, all the way to the top of the food chain needs–or gets value from coaching.

Everyone needs to constantly learn, improve, and grow.

But we don’t need to learn the same things. We don’t all learn in the same ways.

So we don’t need the same coaching or the same amount of time spent in coaching.

Coaching is intensely personal. It’s focused on the individual, where they are at now, what they need to grow, what they need to perform at the highest levels possible.

The core topic of our conversation was on Coaching. We had a wide ranging discussion on how sales managers could integrate coaching into their daily activities, how to leverage reviews as powerful coaching opportunities, different approaches to coaching, and finding the time to coach.

The original of this podcast can be found at Thierry’s site–along with a number of other outstanding interviews. If you want perspectives from some of the leading sales enablement people in the community, make sure you visit the site and subscribe to his podcasts.

]]>As sales and marketing professionals, we are supposed to help our customers identify new opportunities, improve their operations, solve problems.

More and more, we are learning that our success with customers has less to do with what we sell, but more to do with how we engage them, how we help them identify new opportunities through providing insight, and how we help facilitate the buying process. In short, it’s how we help them identify the need to change and drive change in their own organizations.

We constantly struggle in doing this, we invest millions in training, tools, programs, and so forth–honing our marketing content and messages, polishing the skills of our people in helping our customers identify and solve problems.

Unfortunately, too often, we fail, so we go through another cycle with new training, different tools, different programs, sometimes different sales/marketing execs, doing it all over again. Maybe we produce some results, but we can’t sustain them or they never meet our goals.

This is a good news, bad news story.

The good news is that in driving these strategies, we are customer focused, we are trying to do the things we need to be doing to engage our customers and prospects. We’re trying to create value less in what we sell, but in how we sell and engage the customer. By all measures of “modern sales/marketing,” that’s the right thing to do.

Now to get to the bad news.

I suspect one of the reasons we fail so often in doing this with the customers, is that we are really bad at doing the same thing internally.

Stated differently, if we are really bad at identifying opportunities, solving problems, driving change in our own organizations, how can we ever expect to be good at doing that with our customers?

It turns out, what we do with our customers is likely to mirror how effectively we do those same things internally.

If we consistently have high failure rates, dysfunctional behaviors, bad communications, churn, disagreement, resistance to change within our own organizations, we will not likely understand what success looks like.

As a result, we have great difficulty credibly communicating and engaging customers in solving their own problems and driving change in their own organization.

The phrase, “Physician, heal thyself,” comes to mind.

Perhaps, rather than going through a new round of investments in training, tools, people, programs focused on how we engage our customers; we should start looking at our own organizations and our abilities to solve problems and drive change with ourselves and colleagues in the company.

We can never really help our customers fix their problems, until we have fixed our own.

Intuitively, this makes sense. We think of challenges our customers have in working with us–lack of ease of doing business, bad support, poor customer experience, billing problems, bad quality, missed commitments, unmet expectations. Our own problems impact our ability to maintain and grow business with our customers. Our newly acquired customers may not know this yet, but we might soon inflict these issues on them.

Perhaps, the best way to improve our abilities to help our customers is to first improve our abilities–and results in helping ourselves.

Perhaps, if we are truly collaborative, internally, we can learn how to be more collaborative with our customers.

Perhaps, if we are more disciplined and successful with our own ability to improve our operations, we can learn how to be more effective in helping our customers do the same.

Perhaps, if we are more genuinely interested in the success of our peers, other in the company–investing in shared success, we can learn to be better aligned with with helping our customers invest in and achieve success.

Perhaps, if we are much more effective at getting things done internally, we can learn how to help our customers get things done more effectively.

Perhaps, if our managers and executives are better at problem solving and change management internally, they could more effectively coach sales people in how to do this with their customers.

Perhaps, if we are better, internally, at learning and continuous improvement, we would have the experience base and capabilities to offer our customers true leadership in their learning, improvement, change management journeys.

Maybe, before we invest in that next new sales training program, tool or initiative to help our customers solve their problems, we might first look in the mirror.

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]]>A couple of times a day, I skim my “Junk Mail” folder checking to see if there are legit messages then emptying it. The minute it takes me to do this also provides great comic relief on the hundreds of inept prospecting emails I get.

These are legitimate emails from well established companies–not the emails asking me to buy cheap drugs or to help free a fortune held captive in a West African company.

They are emails from well established brands/companies. Unfortunately, they’ve bought a list from a disreputable list management firm, or they’ve scraped the web, or they’ve “deconstructed” our email format to build their lists. That’s what lands them in the Junk Mail folder.

But their email messaging tactics are equally misdirected.

I’ve seen a lot of them, from people I don’t know and probably don’t care to know, with the following in the subject line: Let’s Catch Up. I also see this title in a lot of the prospecting messages that make it through my SPAM filters.

How stupid do these marketers and sales people think I (we) are?

Why am I going to waste my valuable time “catching up” with someone I have never met, selling something I really don’t care about?

We have no past experience or shared history about which to “catch up.” We have no remembrances to update. Since there is no past experience, “catching up” is meaningless.

I wonder why these people feel they can feign familiarity or a past relationship, when we clearly have never had one. Do they think I’ll immediately trust them? Do they think the familiar approach will cause me to respond.

If they want to catch my attention, they have–but the lingering impression is ineptness, stupidity, thoughtlessness, and manipulation. Try selling me something from that starting point!

We, as a profession, are better than this!

We owe it to our prospects and customers to think more highly of them, their intelligence, and their time.

We need to set higher standards for our marketing programs, for how we engage our customers, for how we, as sales people, want to be perceived by our prospects.

Catching the attentions of our prospects and customers is hard enough, why start with a negative impression!